Who's The Avenger Now?
by redcat512
Summary: One shot. Naruto’s final match against Orochimaru. ...Or is it? WARNINGS: Language, mild gore, sad ending.


**Summary:** One shot. Naruto's final match against Orochimaru. ...Or is it?

**Warnings: **Language, mild gore, sad ending. (Not in the way you would expect. I hope. Or am I that transparent?)

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**Who's The Avenger Now?**

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Naruto fell into the trunk of a tree, wheezing to get his breath back before the next attack. The moonlight was making things harder to see, and if it weren't for Kyuubi's developed night vision, Naruto wouldn't have seen the next attack before it was too late.**

"You'll never be able to beat me, Naruto-kun..." his enemy's unnaturally long tongue flew threw the air, aiming at Naruto. "In fact, you might as well give up now." The snake Sannin added offhandedly, as if seriously offering him a way out.

The blonde ninja dodged smoothly, as if it wasn't costing him everything he had just to keep standing, and then let several kunai fly from his hand.

The kunai weren't supposed to do any real damage; Orochimaru knew that Naruto was simply stalling for time, just trying to avoid dying. He had already landed a few damaging hits on the blonde, and, despite Naruto's resolve to never, never let the snake win - even if he had to die with the bastard – he was starting to tire, starting to really feel those cracked ribs and the multiple cuts from that nasty, surprisingly razor-sharp tongue.

And Naruto himself hadn't managed to return the favor, at least, nothing past a few minor bruises and one single facial cut. Although, those were more to do with the luck than skill, and Naruto had no doubt the snake didn't even notice them right now.

Just as expected, Orochimaru twisted his creepily flexible body out of the way of the flying kunai without even moving his feet. The kunai buried themselves in the tree behind him, almost as one.

Orochimaru was about to move back to his original position when he hesitated, noticing a glint in the air, moonlight reflected off of something.

"Stupid Naruto-kun..." his vicious voice dripped with false honey, "chakra threads attached to kunai... You think I haven't seen Sasuke_-_kun use the same trick before?"

Naruto felt a low growl in his throat. "How the fuck do you have the balls to say his name like that! You fucking bastard, you don't deserve to have him _spit_ at you!" he felt so angry, hearing this filthy demon say his name, he could only see his leering face for a second, the rest obscured by black, until the blood pounding behind his eyes receded and his vision was fine again, "bastard that he is..." Naruto's throat hurt suddenly, he almost couldn't speak, "bastard that he _was_ - he was still a million times better than _you!!_" He spit the last word out like it tasted bad, and he still felt that horrible pain in his throat and the feeling in his eyes, making him blink, blink, keep blinking just to will the blurriness away.

The snake nin simply smirked at Naruto as he carefully sliced through the chakra threads connected to the kunai. Couldn't miss one after all, since that could prove a fatal mistake. "Sasuke-kun doesn't deserve such devotion as yours, Naruto-kun. Why do you keep insisting he's so innocent?"

Naruto bared his teeth in a snarl at Orochimaru's blatant disregard of his command. It didn't matter, anyway. That snake would pay for it later. "Shut the fuck up! _HE_ was innocent! It was _you_ who corrupted him, it was _you_ who made him leave, and it was _you_ who _KILLED_ him. So don't you _DARE_ use his name like you know him! You fucking piece of chicken shit, I'll kill you before I let you say that again." the feeling in his throat was gone now, thank god, but it was replaced by pure, blind rage. Naruto couldn't even feel the pain of his poor, abused ribs anymore. It was just him and that goddamned face, with its disgusting tongue. The tongue that didn't belong there, on the pale mocking human before him. It would have looked better on the face of a monster, not this.

And Naruto was going to kill him for it.

He dredged up the very last remains of his chakra, now mixed into a violet mess, a combination of Kyuubi and Naruto that might hopefully just be enough, at least for his current needs.

He formed the seal for his favorite technique - already imagining Orochimaru's knowing grin fading from his face as his shocked body crumpled - and then yelled 'Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!' one final time as several dozen clones surrounded him.

It was ironic that everything would end here, now, with that particular technique. Bunshin no Jutsu had been his very worst technique, back when he was in the academy. Back when he was still 'Dropout Naruto', back when Sasuke ignored him. Then he had mastered this technique, and it had become his trademark, his calling card, so to speak. It had amazed adult ninjas that a stupid prankster like him had mastered something like that overnight, especially in a field previously so challenging to him.

None of them had known that Naruto would have done anything for acceptance.

None of them had known that something like learning a technique was the shortest distance Naruto had ever gone to gain acceptance.

None of them had seen him grit his teeth in silence every time Sakura or Sasuke had dismissed him as an idiot.

None of them had seen Naruto's triumphant smirk when Sasuke finally realized that Naruto was not just a dropout anymore, not just an attention-deficient prankster with no skill.

None of them had ever stopped underestimating him, either. They said he was the number one ninja at surprising people. That wasn't true. He wasn't surprising; it was _they_ who kept expecting him to fail, to fall short, to stumble. And when he didn't, or when he did, and then just got back up, still fighting - they were surprised.

It's not hard to exceed expectations when nothing much is expected of you in the first place. And nothing much had ever been expected of Naruto, with the Kyuubi no kitsune inside him.

And Orochimaru had made the exact same mistake. He had underestimated Naruto, had expected him to fall down - and stay down, had expected him to crumble in the face of adversity.

But Naruto was used to adversity. How could he not be? After all; he was the Kyuubi, the drop out, the idiot, the demon, the dobe, the monster, the loser.

Adversity was something he was used to.

He grinned viciously, feeling the chakra accumulate in his hand as every single one of his clones molded identical glowing spheres in their hands. Some were holding the swirling orbs as they formed, some were just helping, but all in all, there were probably about thirty Rasengan aimed in Orochimaru's direction.

The snake Sannin's dark eyes almost widened, he hadn't expected Naruto to have so much chakra still left.

The corner of Naruto's mouth twitched up into a smirk. The Rasengan were mostly just illusions, but Orochimaru didn't need to know that.

"Oi, bastard!" the Narutos yelled at him at the same time, their voices overlapping and echoing through the night valley. "Try and dodge _this_, you creepy weirdo!" two more clones sprang out of thin air and somehow managed to clasp onto Orochimaru's arms. He wasn't sure what to be more surprised by, their presence, or the particularly idiotic insult Naruto had managed to dredge up from the recesses of his mind. _Which can't be all that far from the front part_, he thought distractedly as he tried to process this new development.

And then there were over two dozen, angry, blonde idiots rushing at him, and Orochimaru wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't dodge easily with those two attached to his arms, so he quickly knocked their heads together, making them disappear in a cloud of smoke.

But then the closest Naruto was almost upon him and Orochimaru had no time to do anything else, so he just jumped back, hoping to buy a few seconds. He felt a tree at his back, the same one with the kunai embedded in it, at his back and relaxed, knowing that Naruto couldn't attack from behind now.

But the Narutos kept running straight at him, and the snake nin almost found himself wondering if the tables had turned, if he was the one about to be terribly, hopelessly beaten.

But the moment passed, and he pasted his usual cold sneer on his face and the Narutos were disappearing, blinked out of existence with a single well placed punch.

And then the last three Naruto's left were holding back, and he could see the wariness in their eyes. The snake grinned, realizing that one of them was the real one and wouldn't attack for fear of getting even more injured.

It almost annoyed that Naruto was coward enough to hold back because of fear. The way in which Sasuke had thought of him had made Orochimaru think that Naruto was something special: a fearless, if foolhardy, ninja who never gave up. Clearly, the Uchiha had been overestimating his friend's bravery, as even now, Orochimaru could see reluctance in those clear blue eyes.

"Well, Naruto-kun? Is that all you've got?" he asked snidely, wanting to provoke Naruto into making a foolish mistake, even with his newfound caution.

"Shut up. I've still got plenty." The blonde managed a threatening glare, but Orochimaru grinned it away. He could see that it was taxing on the demon's host to just keep up the Shadow clones, and that sooner or later, Naruto would collapse, and then this charade would be over, he wouldn't have to pretend that this fight meant anything anymore.

Naruto was just one stupid, unyielding idiot, and Orochimaru was surprised at himself when he had even humored the moron thus far into thinking he had any kind of chance of victory.

"Of course you do, Naruto-kun..." Orochimaru soothed, "...you just can't stay standing anymore for your chakra depletion."

"I'll show _you _chakra depletion!" This achieved precisely what the snake had intended: it infuriated Naruto into running forward - only one of him now, the other two stayed behind, forgotten – with a blazing swirl of chakra in his hand as his face twisted into a vicious snarl that wouldn't have shamed the Kyuubi itself.

Orochimaru allowed himself a mental smile at Naruto's predictability and neatly stepped out of the way.

Or, he would have, if he hadn't found his feet inexplicably rooted to the spot.

A foreboding shudder ripped through him as he glanced down and saw a million chakra threads, almost like cobwebs, wound around his feet.

And he remembered the kunai that Naruto had thrown, and in a millisecond realized the trick behind them.

He had cut the threads, but some of it must have remained on the kunai themselves, because in the confusion caused by the Shadow clones, one of Narutos must have fed more chakra to it, and slowly tied him up.

And how had he not noticed that? His feet tied up like that?

"One thing, bastard..." Naruto whispered as he drew his hand back, the sparking blue light distorting his almost animalistic features into a monster worth scaring children with. Into the monster he was supposed to be, actually. "This is what happens when you show off, and stay in the same place as you dodge."

An emotion flickered on Naruto's face for less than an instant, so that Orochimaru wasn't sure he had even seen it, let alone what it was, and then Naruto's hand, Rasengan and all, had plunged into his stomach and he couldn't even scream for the suffocating pain of it. And then he interpreted Naruto's expression, and his dying thought was: _He regrets killing me..._

And Naruto remained like that, even long after the bastard was dead, one hand covered up to the elbow in charred and bloody entrails; the other holding him up against the tree behind his dead enemy.

Naruto didn't move, even when a part of him noticed that his hand arm had cramped up, that he probably had red indentations along his palm and forearm, where they met the bark of the tree.

And then the sky was getting lighter, and eventually Naruto noticed, because he could hear birds, and that reminded him that crows would come soon and he was standing pressed up against a tree and a dead murderer.

At last, he forced himself to drop the arm pressed so deeply against the tree, and he slowly extracted the other from the dead body.

A morbidly amused part of his mind noted that the bastard did have a heart, after all.

He would have to tell Sakura someday.

If he could bear to talk about it.

How he had killed his worst enemy, how he had killed the thief who had stolen his best friend, how he had killed the person he hated most.

"See, Sasuke?" The blonde whispered as he closed the cold lifeless eyes with his clean hand and stepped away, "I did get revenge. I kept my word. It's my way of the ninja, remember?"

He had done his duty to Konoha. He had killed its worst enemy.

And now he wanted to curl up and cry, but he couldn't.

He allowed himself a single tear as he stepped back from the body, letting it slide to the ground.

One tear.

And after that tear, he would go and emotionlessly report to Tsunade-baa-chan how he had found Orochimaru and killed him.

And no one would ever ask why Naruto never showed them the body, or whose face the snake had been using.

Or how he had managed to bring himself to kill someone wearing his best friend's body.

"Good bye, Sasuke-teme." He whispered, as he used a chakra trick Kakashi had taught him to set the tree on fire, Sasuke's broken body along with it.

He turned towards Konoha without looking back.

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**End****

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****Author's Note: **Okay, who saw that coming? Orochimaru turning out to be Sasuke, I man? Was it too predictable? I kind of wanted it to be a twist, but I don't think I managed it very well... 

Anyway, this was just a one-shot that got inspired by the flashback in Chapter 3 of 'Walking Corpse' by dazdnconfusd730 on FFn. 'Walking Corpse' a really good, semi-yaoi story (not the one on FFn, but the one on AFFn is), and I would definitely recommend it. FFn id: 2166001 for those interested in reading it.

I actually stopped halfway through a sentence and opened up Word because the inspiration was so sudden. It all stemmed from the thought; 'What if Naruto had to kill Sasuke to kill Orochimaru?' It was torture, finishing writing this before being able to focus on reading the story, though. Because I really wanted to go back to reading the fic, but the plot bunnies wouldn't let me. :( Now I can go on normally, at least.


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